Cellular communication systems have become commonplace and are used by a large majority of people for person to person communication. Moreover, to with the increasing use of smartphones, digitally distributed content is increasingly consumed on wireless devices. While a large part of such content, e.g. web content, needs to be directly controllable by the user, media content such as video can in many cases be shared by several users.
In order to increase efficiency for shared media consumption, point-to-multipoint systems such as broadcasting can be used. In this way, network resources are shared between receiving wireless devices to a higher degree. One standard for broadcasting using cellular communication systems is 3GPP MBMS (3rd Generation Partnership Project—Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service).
In some cases, services provided through point-to-multipoint systems and point-to-point systems are access protected. In this way, access to a particular service can be restricted, e.g. to only those who have subscribed to the service.
3GPP TS 26.346 version 11 describes protocols and codecs for MBMS, including how wireless devices can gain access to access protected services. However, the way in which the wireless device gains access is cumbersome and it would be beneficial if it, in some way, could be made more efficient. This is particularly the case for situations where multiple delivery methods could be used for the same service, where the methods according to the prior art are particularly resource intensive.